North Richmond: A photo essay

Just walking down the street in North Richmond gives you a glimpse of this community’s story. It’s a place of faded history and echoing vibrancy, suffused in poverty, pollution and sporadic violence. The people are strong. The pulse is still there.

The corner market draws mothers, children, roughnecks and raconteurs inside its walls, which are riddled with bullet holes and adorned with memorials to those killed in the streets.

The sagging yellow building on the west side of Kelsey Street clings to iron bars driven into its sloughing stucco exterior. A sign above advertises a boutique long since gone.

Photo by: Robert Rogers

Photo by: Robert Rogers

Photo by: Robert Rogers

Photo by: Robert Rogers

Photo by: Robert Rogers

The largely vacant government housing projects are a few blocks away, many units gutted of their pipes and wiring and bearing the rot of water damage.

The scarred buildings stand impassive among sinews of overgrown vegetation.

There’s concrete and rebar molded into a building on Filbert Street.

If you listen closely, maybe you can hear the echoes of the sonorous saxophones or lively conversations that once flowed from Minnie Lou’s. For decades, it was the hottest spot in the neighborhood for food and entertainment.

But like almost every other business, Minnie Lou’s ceased to exist in North Richmond long ago, stripping another parcel of land of its soul.

Some of North Richmond’s history is intangible, but no less real. A cloud of sulfuric acid was released by the nearby chemical plant in 1993, a toxic drift that descended on this tiny community and sickened thousands.

The cloud is gone, but the scars are indelible, as are the decades of emissions from nearby dumps and oil refining operations, which combine with the natural sea breezes to ensure constant delivery of chemical vapors to the respiratory systems of the roughly 2,500 people who reside here.

This is a community at once within and apart from the city of Richmond and the surrounding Bay Area.

A square mile of unincorporated county land that has been bypassed during several annexations through the years, North Richmond is an island of pride, poverty and pollution with an identity all its own.

The photos in this essay attempt to capture the tragic beauty, fierce independence and irrepressible hope on display here every day.

4 Comments

Nice photo show . But you left out a lot that didn’t fit into this hard knock perspective . There are wonderful and uplifting goings on in North Richmond and Richmond itself . Go check out Verde School , the Community garden etc. . I’m the owner of Annie’s Annuals nursery right there on Market where you photographed ( But did not show) And yes I am a business in North Richmond along with many others here. We have folks from the community visiting everyday telling us of how they are working to support and improve the community . Please don’t buy into the one sided down- and -out view of our community . Big media already does enough of that .
Come back and give some attention to those who are working for positive change .
Annie

A Richmond resident for 23+ years, in the spring of 2009 I had a temp job checking addresses for the Census. One of my areas was North Richmond. I ran into lots of friendly people, and never felt afraid. Lots of speculators had gone in and knocked down old homes and put up bigger new ones, some empty or in foreclosure, or unfinished. Lots of potential that just hasn’t happened yet. Maybe next time!

I also Live in North Richmond and in the last 15 years the Latino Community has grown . i live near Shield Reid Park and it’s about Half Latino here and you completely Left out that segment of North Richmond’s community . like me and my Comrades Belive lets focus on all people of Richmond One Richmond .

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Richmond Confidential is an online news service produced by the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley for, and about, the people of Richmond, California. Our goal is to produce professional and engaging journalism that is useful for the citizens of this city. With 12 full time reporters, we’ll be covering education, development, politics, culture, social justice, crime—and anything that happens that people need to know about. We can’t do this alone. We need you, the users of this site, to talk with us, make suggestions, point us in the direction of the truth, and help us report stories of value. How can you do that? Comment on our stories, correct us when we make a mistake, and help us understand the community you live in. In our way of thinking, the best journalism is a conversation in which we all take part.